layman's space

Thursday, 05 November 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 The Watershed Mission office in Nuapada district is regularly violating RTI rules. The first appellate authority in the district is also indifferent towards the appeal of the applicants. They are in hand in gloves with their field offices, thus do not allow transparency, said the RTI activists of Nuapada district, adding that the violation is done knowingly to suppress corruption in implementation of watershed activities. Parameswar Barik of Dhanksar village had applied to the PIO, District Watershed Mission office, seeking information on activities taken up in Dhanksar and Sardhapur villages of Khariar block under watershed development programme. He was directed by the PIO to deposit Rs27,440 as Xerox cost per page. Barik went for an appeal before the first appellate authority. The Project Director of Watershed Mission of Nuapada, as the First Appellate Authority interestingly ju...

Saturday, 17 October 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 Low rainfall in July and August in Nuapada district has caused a devastating impact on rice cultivation in medium as well as low lands during the the current Kharif operations. According to reports submitted on October 13 by the district Deputy Director of Agriculture to the Department of Agriculture and Food Production, paddy cultivation in 33,865 hectares of medium land has been affected due to erratic rainfall which is about 42 per cent of the total paddy area covered in the district. Out of the total affected area, 27,979 hectares (86%) is non-irrigated land. The DDA office has further reported that an amount of Rs 23.9 crore is required for payment of input subsidy to the farmers who have incurred loss in cultivation during the current season. Meanwhile, farmers of the district, who had been agitating against the Government’s silence over the drought situation in the distric...

Sunday, 04 October 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 Harising Chinda, a small farmer of Chhuinpani village, will get a good harvest of paddy this year from his two acres of land in spite of the scanty rainfall during the current monsoon. He had organised his fellow villagers to construct a diversion wire across the stream ‘Dhusab’ to divert water to a small patch of about 25 acres of rice field. The structure here is a stone bund, which starts from the one end of the stream and runs diagonally up to the mouth of the canal. There is no use of cement mortar, thus grass and soil have been put to seal the gaps. “We don’t need big projects, small structures like this are sufficient,” says Harising, adding, “It needs only 3 to 4 full days’ of work for 10 persons to make this bund and food for a whole year for 9 households of our village assured.” Jaldhar Chinda, father of Harising, had made a stone bund across the stream “Vensa” a decade a...

Monday, 28 September 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 The house of Kajal Dash Tandi of Jholpathar village in Nuapada district is locked since last year. Grasses and bushes in the small front yard with a fence of twigs prove that no one has entered even into this open space for months. Three thorny branches of Ber tree (locally known as Kanta Jhap) at the entrance of the fence reveal that Kajal has left home with his family as a “Dadan”(migrant labourer). “Kajal, with his wife and four children left home in November 2014 with a Sardar (labour contractor), named Keshari Deep of Muribahal village in Balangir district to work in a brick kiln in Andhra Pradesh. We have not heard of the family since then,” say the villagers. “Kajal’s 15- year-old son Dinesh stayed at home to appear class X exams, but he also left home after two months without appearing the exams due to lack of food,” they add. Dukhuram Tandi, with his wife Phatu and four ch...

Thursday, 17 September 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 Acting upon an urgent appeal of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the Government of Odisha has directed Women & Child Development and Health & Family Welfare Departments to comply with a report on the health situation of women and children of people of Sunabeda plateau located in Komna block of Nuapada district. Basing on a news report of The Pioneer of August 1 this year, the AHRC had published an urgent appeal in its web portal and at the same time had sent letters to concerned departments of the Governments of India and Odisha requesting functionaliaation of the necessary health care facilities and to ensure that the women of Nuapada district get benefits of all welfare schemes in a fair and just manner. The AHRC had claimed that due to absence of transport facility and absence of health personnel, most of the pregnant women were forced to del...

Wednesday, 09 September 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in   Bhubaneswar 1 2 3 4 5 The people of Marguda village in Nuapada district are trying to make a structure across the Giribar stream to divert its water to a /30-acre patch of land. They propose to cultivate paddy in that patch during Rabi season with the water. The structure they are making is not a cement or concrete structure; rather the materials used here are bamboo, wooden poles, straw and a polythene sheet. A bamboo woven frame of about 8 feet high and 20 feet wide has been laid across the stream as a wall. Six cone shaped bamboo frames filled with boulders and bound to wooden poles placed on the downstream side provides support to the wide frame to stand straight. Polythene sheets and straw have been spread over the wide frame to check water from running down. “Water diverted from the stream through a canal will be stored in the Raital Sagar (Raital reservoir) of our village and the reservoir w...

Tuesday, 25 August 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in  Raipur Kusha Punji, a ten-year-old boy of Salemudga village of Balangir district, is lying on a bed in the Evangelical Mission Hospital of Khariar in Nuapada district with a broken leg.The thigh bone of his right leg broke when he fell down from a roof of his school toilet while playing with other boys after school hour. The hospital has charged about `10,000 for the operation and medicine cost which Kusha’s father Bhaja is unable to pay. Bhaja has decided to take the child back to his village. But, he is not sure what to do with the child after taking him back to his village. “I am a landless. I earn only `60 per day as a farm labourer. How can I pay this much of amount,” asked Bhaja, tears rolling down from his eyes. His wife Gurubari consoled him and said, “Don’t be silly, the boy cries more seeing you weep.” “We should be ashamed that our health system is unable to provide treatment to a poor child even at the distr...

Monday, 17 August 2015 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in Bhubaneswar Kosanta Podh is a marginal farmer of Kusmal village in Nuapada district. He had planned for transplantation of paddy in 2 acres of his land this year. But, paddy seedlings in the field have turned yellow now for want of water. “The land would go fallow. The only way out is to migrate,” said a hopeless Kosanta. Suratha Sagaria is the Sarapanch of Birighat Panchayat in Khariar block. He had also planned for paddy transplantation in 2 acres of land. “I have already left the seed field open for grazing of cattle. The seedlings died due to lack of moisture,” said Suratha. More than 100 acres, which is about 50 per cent of total land in Kusmal village, will remain fallow this year. Not only this, the paddy done through broadcasting of seeds will also suffer. “Crop will fail in more than 80 per cent of total land in our village,” Suratha added. Lack of rain caused havoc among farmers, especially in Khariar, Sinapali and Komna...